Walking through the National Geographic Society’s latest exhibition, “Women of Vision,” one is instantly surrounded by exhilaration and pain, beauty and longing. Although all of the images are courtesy of 11 female photographers, once their images grab you, gender falls by the wayside.

And that’s how it should be, says Lynn Johnson, a photographer whose work is included in the exhibit. “In some ways, this conversation about what does it mean to have a women photographer’s exhibit is kind of obscuring the whole issue, which is just that these are powerful photographs.”

Photographer Maggie Steber, whose work is also included in the exhibit, says she worries more about whether she’s capturing the real moments in someone’s life rather than gender